Solutions to US parking problems won't help me

It’s the kind of email I get routinely at my job: Pitches to write articles about a topic or to review a book. This time, the subject was parking.

Yes, parking.

The emailer was passionate about the subject. He called himself “the parking industry’s leading publicist,” which is kind of like being “the most famous 50-something male named Stanhope is Suisun City.”

His missive discussed how Americans are awful concerning parking issues, including parking lot brawls, which I didn't know was a thing. The author also advocated several changes that could make parking better and offered to help set up interviews for an article on parking.

Interesting, but what I really want is some help on parking.

Because I’m not particularly good at it.

Oh, I’m especially proud of my ability to parallel park better than anyone reading this column (think I’m wrong? Well, you’re wrong!). But parking in a closed structure? Not so great.

I’ve written before about my difficulties in the Stanhope Family Garage, which include ripping the side-view mirrors off both sides of vehicles and a memorable experience when I backed our old minivan into a closed garage door.

But that’s old news. Parking inside isn't. Take an incident from about a year ago.

My office has a subterranean parking garage. It’s three huge floors of vehicles – which always makes me feel, as I navigate my way from my Prius to the elevators, like I’m in a 1970s detective movie and a deranged gunman is about to shoot me. It echoes. It’s cold. There’s plenty of room for bad guys to hide.

And I make it all the way to the elevators every day, because I'm courageous.

Anyway, on the day in question, I pulled into my space (in a parking garage, like in a meeting room, there are no assigned spaces. Except you sit or park in the same space every time). I don't remember whether I was listening to a podcast or thinking about my coming day or contemplating a time when I'd get an email from the parking industry's leading publicist.

Anyway, I heard a loud crunch.

"Dang, I scratched my car," I mumbled.

Wrong. I didn't scratch it, I crunched it. Which is why I heard a crunch and not a scratch.

I got out and saw the front driver's-side panel was dented. Severely. I had driven into a concrete pole while parking.

Since I couldn't fix it, I did the next best thing: I ignored it. I didn't say anything to Mrs. Brad and hoped that one day the big dent would simply reverse itself.

It didn't. A few weeks later, Mrs. Brad saw it, gasped and asked me what happened. I explained, suggesting that the concrete pole had moved in front of me.

She wasn't impressed. Just like she wasn't impressed on the driver's-side mirror, passenger-side mirror and backing-into-the-garage-door incidents.

Mrs. Brad thought I wasn't paying attention, which was arguably true.

Enough of the blame-casting. Here's the takeaway. We can add technology and smooth out our experiences while parking. We can stop having brawls in parking lots. But until the concrete poles stop jumping in front of innocent 2005 Toyota Priuses (Prii?), we won't fix the parking problem.

Even the parking industry's leading publicist knows that. Right?

Right?

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Spacecraft threat brings fear, anxiety, love songs

I'm buying a helmet for March, just to be safe, and so should you.

In case you haven't heard, a Chinese space station is expected to fall back to Earth late that month, bringing a trail of destruction, death and horror.

Or not.

Experts scoff at the idea that someone will get hit by the falling space station in the same way people scoffed at the idea that we could watch TV on our phones or that "Sharknado" could become a successful franchise. Look who's laughing now!

Here's what I know: While it's likely that some parts of the satellite will burn on re-entry, larger pieces could flatten you like a cartoon character while you're walking from the mall to your car. Yes, our mall. And your car.

The satellite, Tiangong-1 (and let's hear it for a satellite with a name I can pronounce, especially one with the world "gong" in it), was launched in 2011 as China's first crewed space station. Now it's China's first crude space station, am I right?

Anyway, the spaceship weighs nearly 19,000 pounds and one estimate says that between 10 and 40 percent of the craft will make it to ground.

I'll do the math for you: Between 2,000 pounds and 10,000 pounds – the range between a pontoon boat and three mid-sized cars – will plummet from the sky on a lazy March day.

Get your helmet!

The problem arose from the fact that the Chinese Space Agency lost contact and control of the space station, something many observers have compared to the relationship between the producers of "Two and a Half Men" and Charlie Sheen in 2011. They don't know when or where it will come down, in the same way those producers didn't know when Sheen would come down.

Now, of course, comes the spin.

The world's space agencies say they have tracked Tiangong-1 and it will come down between 43 degrees North and 43 degrees South longitude. They stress that most of that range is covered by oceans and is unpopulated.

Here's what they don't say: That's where we all live! Fairfield, for instance, is 38.2494 degrees North.

We are in the splash zone!

This has happened before. A Russian spacecraft fell into the Pacific Ocean in 2012. NASA's Skylab – which weighed 160,000 pounds – plummeted to an area near Perth, Australia, in 1979. That is the incident that many blamed for the rise of Australian bands Air Supply and the Little River Band.

Space supporters imply that the past suggests we're safe: There's a big area where Tiangong-1 could land, no one has been killed by a falling spacecraft, only a portion of the craft will make it back, Air Supply and the Little River Band are almost impossible to duplicate.

I say we're due and that the information that a piece of spacecraft weighing 2,000 to 10,000 pounds can hit me is hardly comforting.

Also bad: Apparently, the most dangerous part about Tiangong-1 might not be the debris, but potentially hazardous materials, including hydrazine.

Oh. Em. Gee.

Hydrazine!

(What's hydrazine?)

Space apologists insist the odds are less than winning the lottery or getting hit by lightning, but people win the lottery and get hit by lightning every year, right?

One report indicates there is only a 1-in-10,000 chance that the spacecraft will hit a populated area and damage buildings.

Seems logical . . . but you know what else had a 1-in-10,000 chance? Air Supply and the Little River Band.

I'm not taking any chances and neither should you. Get a helmet.

And start polishing up on the lyrics to "Lost in Love" and "Cool Change."

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Columnist seeks outstanding closing catch phrase

In the 30-plus years of writing a newspaper column, I've achieved nearly all my goals: Won a Pulitzer Prize (actually, it was a Wurlitzer Prize, the chance to briefly sit at an organ in a store), been read by a president (actually, it's the president of the Fairfield-Suisun chapter of the Wham! Fan Club. Namely, me), had a column adapted to a movie (Titanic) and never been suspended (yet).

But an elusive goal remains.

In the thousands (he writes, hoping he hasn't made a horrible math error and that the correct word is actually "dozens") of columns I've crafted, I've never had a catch phrase with which to end the column.

You know, like they do on television. And, likely, in successful columns.

I have no "Seacrest, out" like on "American Idol," or "That's the way it is, Jan. 14, 2018," like Walter Cronkite said in the day, or Paul Harvey's "And now you know . . . the rest of the story."

(Side thought: The fact that two of the three examples I cite were spoken by men who were born 100 years ago is a frightening example of my pop culture relevance.)

Anyway, I haven't given up. It makes sense to have a catch phrase to end each column, so you, the reader, is comfortable.

Not to knock other Daily Republic columnists (which is a lie. I constantly knock them in private), but none have catch-phrase endings. (OK. Kelvin Wade has a catch word, but that doesn't count.) This would put me in the lead in a competition with other columnists that exists only in my mind. I could have a 10-point bonus for having a catch phrase.

So what should it be? The topics I write about are widespread (in the past two months, for instance, I wrote about a Solano County quiz, a message to extraterrestrials, the Toy Hall of Fame, a 53-year-old's baseball comeback and more).

"Seacrest, out," wouldn't apply to those topics and Cronkite's and Harvey's catch phrases are too identified with the late legends.

How about "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the sky"? (Nope. Casey Kasem, who said that, wasn't as old as Cronkite and Harvey, but he was born in 1932.)

It's time to brainstorm. And to get the session started, here are some ideas:

• "This is Brad Stanhope, standing for hope." Instead of rolling my eyes at all the variations of my last name like I have for decades, I embrace it!
• "You can take that to the bank!" This option works best if you're capping off a column with a prediction or bold statement rather than, say, a missive on your fear of the bubonic plague or desire for a pet monkey to serve as a butler, but still . . . worth considering. Although it's from Robert Blake (born in 1933) in his role as TV's Baretta.
• "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll be among the stars." This Casey Kasem-like phrase seems encouraging until you realize it makes no sense. The stars are way, way, way, way beyond the moon. Right?
• "I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast, but I like hot butter on my breakfast toast." It's a lyric from "Rapper's Delight," (released nearly 40 years ago) but it's also kind of boastful, if you consider the admission that you like butter to be boastful.
• "And remember: I'm not perfect, but at least I'm not Tony Wade." Simple. And true.

There are certainly other options worth considering. I welcome suggestions, so feel free to email me with your picks . . . especially if you remember Walter Cronkite and Paul Harvey. And Robert Blake. And Casey Kasem. And "Rappers Delight."

Stanhope, out.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Government agency on ETs means we need to share message

The truth is out there. And we need to spin it. Stat!

A report last month by The New York Times confirmed what those of us who celebrated the crop circles near Larry's Produce in 2003 have long believed: Extraterrestrial aliens are real.

Just ask the U.S. Department of Defense.

Well, kind of.

The DoD (as insiders call it) may not confirm that extraterrestrials are real, but it takes them seriously enough to investigate.

The Times reported that an agency called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) existed for years, getting about $20 million a year in funding from the government until it was shut down in 2012.

Allegedly shut down.

Insiders say it still exists.

AATIP began in 2007, largely at the request of Nevada Sen. Harry Reid (Area 51 is in Nevada, by the way. Coincidence? Hardly). Most of the government money went to a research company headed by a man who told "60 Minutes" that he was convinced that aliens exist and have visited Earth.

They have visited Earth! That part's obvious. Is there any other explanation for Gilbert Gottfried?

But our government pursued them.

During the AATIP's years of official standing (which coincided with Alex Smith's career with the 49ers. Coincidence? Hardly.), the program compiled reports that described sightings of aircraft with technology that went beyond contemporary aeronautical science. The UFOs weren't possible for humans.

Members also studied video of encounters between UFOs and American military aircraft.

Of course, this is nothing new: The Air Force investigated more than 12,000 UFO sightings from 1947 to 1969 (Which is when Woodstock happened, which allowed the government to ascribe all UFO sightings to brown acid. Coincidence? Hardly.).

Regardless, let's make the obvious jump: UFOs are real and the government knows it. Otherwise, why spend millions of dollars every year?

Fellow humans, we need to be proactive. Aliens are investigating us, so we need to communicate with them.

The next step is to fashion our message. They are among us.

I'm here to help and the work begins with where marketing professionals always begin: Who is our audience? What is our message? How do we best communicate it?

Audience: It's obviously extraterrestrials who are curious enough to visit us.

Message: It should be simple: Don't hurt us. We stay in peace. We want to be your friend. Phone home. Dilly dilly.

Method: Social media is likely outdated to anyone with technology to visit far-off planets. Television and radio signals – the preferred method in decades past – are already passe on Earth. Sometimes the best method is simple and here's my recommendation:

Reprint this column. Leave it out for the aliens to see. Refer extraterrestrials to the Daily Republic web page. Read it aloud, in case they're listening.

And if you're an ET and you're reading this, here's what we have to say:

Don't hurt us.

We stay in peace.

We want to be your friends.

Phone home.

Dilly dilly.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.